Estimation of Vitamin C Intake Requirements Based on Body Weight: Implications for Obesity

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 2.63 MB, PDF document

Higher body weight is known to negatively impact plasma vitamin C status. However, despite this well-documented inverse association, recommendations on daily vitamin C intakes by health authorities worldwide do not include particular reference values for people of higher body weight. This suggests that people of higher body weight and people with obesity may be receiving insufficient vitamin C in spite of ingesting the amounts recommended by their health authorities. The current preliminary investigation sought to estimate how much additional vitamin C people with higher body weights would need to consume in order to attain a comparable vitamin C status to that of a lower weight person consuming an average Western vitamin C intake. Data from two published vitamin C dose-concentration studies were used to generate the relationship: a detailed pharmacokinetic study with seven healthy non-smoking men and a multiple depletion-repletion study with 68 healthy non-smoking men of varying body weights. Our estimates suggest that an additional intake of 10 mg vitamin C/day is required for every 10 kg increase in body weight to attain a comparable plasma concentration to a 60 kg individual with a vitamin C intake of similar to 110 mg/day, which is the daily intake recommended by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Thus, individuals weighing e.g., 80 and 90 kg will need to consume similar to 130 and 140 mg vitamin C/day, respectively. People with obesity will likely need even higher vitamin C intakes. As poor vitamin C status is associated with increased risk of several chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, these findings may have important public health implications. As such, dose-finding studies are required to determine optimal vitamin C intakes for overweight and obese people.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1460
JournalNutrients
Volume14
Issue number7
Number of pages8
ISSN2072-6643
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

    Research areas

  • vitamin C, ascorbate, obesity, body weight, vitamin C intake, plasma ascorbate concentrations, vitamin C requirements, dietary vitamin C, INFLAMMATION, OVERWEIGHT, HEALTH

ID: 317447711